


To Lead Your People

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Elvish Haladin, Gen, Human House of Finwe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 12:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: They were neither of them supposed to end up here, but fate has a funny way of pulling strings.





	To Lead Your People

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tehhumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehhumi/gifts).

> I don't own the Silmarillion.
> 
> Lendmyboyfriendahand requested role reversal with Haleth and Caranthir in the form of a bullet point fic. I've changed the formatting here, but the story remains the same.

Haleth is restless in Aman. She knows the story of what the world was like before they were found by Oromë, and she knows it was dangerous, she knows this is paradise, she knows what everyone keeps telling her, that this is the safest place for their people to be, she just - 

She just goes to the very edge of the Grinding Ice and dreams of trying to cross it. Her brother drags her back before she can.

She lets him, because their father is king and he needs them, and because she’s never wanted to leave her family behind. Never them. She just -

She doesn’t have words for what she wants. She just wants.

She throws her voice in with those who want to leave. The discussion grows ever more heated until it seems it must boil over into violence.

It does. Just not the way anyone expects.

The world plunges into darkness, and in the dark, fear and old rage build and boil. People shove and run and fall and _break -_

When the torches are finally lit and everyone can see again, her father and brother are both dead on the floor.

Mandos assures her that they will someday return. A thousand years or so, he says, enough time to recover, and then he goes back to conferring with the other Valar.

Haleth knows in a distant way that barring accident or injury, she’ll be here in a thousand years to see it.

But she is only barely past her first century now. A thousand years is still unimaginable.

And besides that, they need help now, not in the next millennia.

She marches her people down to the sea to ask ships of the Teleri. 

They refuse her. 

Haleth is too proud to beg, and if they can’t have the ships, well, they didn’t really need them anyway. 

She turns her people to the Ice, and this time, Haldar isn’t there to stop her.

The journey is long and costly, but Haleth leads her people ever on, a fierce beacon of endurance.

She needs that endurance when they reach their destination. Their first sunset is a hopeful sight.

The hordes of Angband are less so.

It’s a long, hopeless war they’ve signed up for, and there are few allies left to claim, but Haleth leads her people on a bloody path to the edge of the Girdle where what’s left of Thingol’s people are besieged.

Thingol tells her that her people are welcome so long as they aren’t friendly to Morgoth.

Haleth looks back at the bloodstained trail she’s carved through Beleriand, all the way back to her father and brother lying dead, and then tells Thingol, as politely as she can, that he’s an idiot.

Judging by the looks on her advisors faces, her best was not actually particularly polite.

The war turns in their favor slowly, at least for a while. Haleth doesn’t know how long they can keep it, but for now they hold the line. She builds a fortress at the front edge of it and keeps a sharp eye on the enemy.

Her nephew discovers Men and sends a message to report it to her. Unfortunately, it arrives in the middle of Morgoth’s forces making another push, so while she’s not uninterested, she’s got more urgent things to worry about. By the time they’ve repulsed the attack, the Men still haven’t attacked them, so she labels it as her nephew’s problem and gets on with things.

This is still her attitude when a band of said Men set up camp in the territory surrounding her fortress. They haven’t bothered her, so she’s not going to bother them.

Or at least that was her plan before a group of orcs manage to get past her forces and decide that the Men make a more tempting target than the fortress.

It takes her a week to pull enough forces together to go after them, mainly because the _reason_ the orcs got past her was that several bands of their brethren were also making nuisances of themselves.

Haleth is grimly certain that she’ll find the village of Men destroyed and the orcs plunging deeper into elf held lands.

Instead she finds the village under siege.

(Finwe is long dead and buried, lost on the journey west. It is Feanor who is chief now - Feanor who spends half his days in the forge figuring out how elvish armor is made and how he can make it better, Feanor who respects his father’s decision to ally with the elves but who will never, ever allow anyone to say his people are inferior to them, Feanor who insists on keeping their own language alive even as he devours knowledge of Sindarin and Quenya alike, Feanor who - )

(Feanor who is the first to charge when the orcs come, and buys the others time to prepare.)

(Feanor who is the first to fall.)

(Maedhros is taken on the first day of the siege, and Fingon is fool enough to charge out after him that night when they hear the screams.)

(Fingon brings him back, against all odds, but with the blood rushing out of the stump of Maedhros’s hand, and his other wounds almost worse, there is nothing they can do to keep him from slipping away with the dawn.)

(They lose Fingon in the fighting the next day. And then Fingolfin and Aredhel and Turgon and Eol and Maeglin and Finrod and Maglor and Celegorm and - )

Haleth doesn’t know all that, of course. She just sees the orcs pounding against the defenses that surely cannot last much longer, and she and her people ride in and crush the orcs between them and the defenders.

“I am Queen Haleth of the Noldor,” she calls out, swinging off her horse. “Who is your leader here?”

Caranthir is not a great warrior, like Fingon was, or a great hunter, like Celegorm was. He’s the one who double-checks that they always have enough for winter, who negotiates the most important trades, who can be counted on to bring home the best value even when he can’t be trusted to be civil about it.

For the past few days, Caranthir has been the one calculating the difference between their casualty rate and their loss of supplies, who’s been stretching out weapons and medicine like its food in the last days of the harshest winters, who’s been snapping out orders regarding this and making it work. Finarfin has been the one deciding where to send people to shore up the wall and to rouse people into fighting just a little bit longer. Who’s in charge overall has not been a relevant question.

They look at each other now, and Finarfin jerks his head at Caranthir because negotiation is what is needed now, and while Finarfin is the more diplomatic of the two, Caranthir is the one who could get water from a stone.

Judging by how much of their crops have been obliterated, they’re going to need him to.

So Caranthir steps forward, his surviving brothers a comforting protective wall behind him, and says, “My father has been dead these seven days,” and how those words burn his throat, “and my eldest brother these past six, and Maglor these past five. Celegorm has been dead yet only a day; would that you had come before then. I speak for the people now.”

It wasn’t supposed to be him. It was never supposed to be him.

But death is a mortal’s gift, as the elves are ever so fond of reminding them, and he has known this day he might come. He has not flinched from preparing just because he feared it. He’s ready.

Ready for anything, perhaps, except for the instant of reflected pain that shines in Queen Haleth’s eyes.

“I too lost father and brother to the foe,” she says, fierceness lost in pain for a brief moment. “Let us see if we can reach some accord.”


End file.
